Pep Guardiola: Man City’s season bad even if we make Champions League

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola scoffed at suggestions that his team could look back on this season as a special one if they clinch a Champions League berth.

City took a big step towards securing European qualification with their 2-1 Premier League win over Aston Villa on Tuesday thanks to Matheus Nunes‘s 94th-minute strike.

Guardiola’s men climbed two spots to third in the league table, still 18 points behind leaders Liverpool and so will finish well short of their early-season goal of capturing an historic fifth consecutive league title.

“This season has been bad,” Guardiola said. “It doesn’t matter whether we reach the [FA Cup] final, or qualification for the Champions League. The reality is that what determines, what makes you feel the season is good is the Premier League, not the Champions League, not FA Cups. It’s that consistency in the Premier League.

“But it happens, sometimes you have bad seasons. The level of the teams [in the Premier League] is outstanding.”

Guardiola, whose team face Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semifinals on Sunday, celebrated with clenched fists and a roar of delight after Nunes fired home from a tight angle from Jéééy dock‘s low cross through the box

“I was so happy. I have to admit it,” Guardiola said.

A top-five finish would go some way to ending the season on a high — and Guardiola’s celebration was evidence of just how important the win could prove to be.

“We have a lot of pressure for the club to go to the Champions League,” said Guardiola, whose City team won the competition for the first time in 2023.

“If we win the next four games, it will have been so important,” he added.

The game had looked destined to end in a draw after Bernardo Silva‘s first-half goal had been canceled out by a Marcus Rashford penalty.

There is still likely to be a tense battle for the Champions League with a clutch of teams in contention going into the final weeks of the season and just four points separating third to seventh in the standings.

But City’s fate is in their own hands after a troubled campaign that saw their title defence unravel before Christmas and their hopes of winning the Champions League end in the playoffs.

Victory moved City up to 61 points and above Nottingham Forest in fourth and Newcastle in fifth.

Chelsea are sixth and Villa, with 57 points, are seventh.

Both City and Villa have played a game more than their top-five rivals. But City know a perfect record from its remaining four league games would guarantee a place in next season’s Champions League.

It would be the 15th season in a row that City have qualified for the competition and would provide an uplifting finale to a campaign that brought an end to Guardiola’s recent dominance of English football.

Defeat was a blow to Villa’s hopes of making it back-to-back seasons in the Champions League after returning to the competition for the first time in 41 years this term and advancing to the quarterfinals.

“Of course, today we lost, but there are still matches to play, still points to play [for]. We will have chances to get the Champions League,” Villa manager Unai Emery said. “I am happy how we are reacting, how every player is facing the moment we are [in].”

Information from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.